Modern family ties� Pete asked me how many children I have. This set me to thinking, I mean the short answer is 2 boys. But, that is so very much not the whole of it. If you consider that more than half of all marriages today end in divorce and most kids are not raised by their original 2 parent family it is a bit mind-boggling when you start to take into account all the relationships involved.
For instance, in my little family there are 3 parents for the 2 children, myself and my 2 ex�s. My youngest son�s father is a lone wolf hermit type and as far as I know Cameron is his only child and he doesn�t have any step-children that I know of� Liam�s story is exactly the opposite, his Daddy is the family type of guy and he�s been making beautiful babies for almost 30 years�. So for Liam his sibling relations are pretty complex, esp. if you extend the relationships that his siblings have with their siblings either half siblings or step siblings, and now that they are having children of their own�. It gets to be a pretty big number quick.
Liam has 3 half-brothers, 1 of whom is my other son Cameron, and 1 half sister (possibly 2 I don�t know for sure) He has 2 step-sisters. His half-brothers and the half sister that all have the same mom, have 1 half brother & 2 step brothers. Those step brothers in turn have 2 half brothers. Liam�s step-sisters have 2 half-brothers. Ok that�s a total of 14 children.
Now if I add in the children that I have been a step-mother for that adds 2 more children. For a total of 16.
And for the really fun part we just for an example of how convoluted a *family* is in today�s world� If I married Randall (and I�m going to leave out the dozens of kids that he might have sired and know nothing about just to make things easy hehe) He has 2 children that each have a different mom. They have a total of 4 half-siblings, So that�s another 6 children for a total of 22. He has been a step-father to at least 4 children that I know of� so the very modest guesstimate is 26 children. TaDa! lol :)
